ActBlue - Reddit for Warren

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Welcome to /r/ElizabethWarren, a community for supporters of US Senator Elizabeth Warren, a candidate for President of the United States of America. For more information about Sen. Warren, be sure to visit her campaign website!

If we organize together, if we fight together, if we persist together, we can win!

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I think almost every day about how amazing it would have been to have Warren as the nominee at a time like now. We would be getting a constant stream of interesting policy ideas that would help people that are struggling, as well as just the upbeat positive attitude of Warren reaching so many more people.

I feel like we are getting a constant stream of policy ideas that are helping people that are struggling.
If you can, watch the interview with David Axelrod and Warren / University of Chicago Institute of Politics
It’s almost an hour long and is very uplifting! No matter where she is, she’s effective.

We need her to be the role model that continues to inspire a higher caliber of person to office. She's 70. I hope she'll be able to retire whenever she wants with all of us having full confidence that the ship of state is heading in a sustainable, ethical direction. Let's hope that a decade is all it will take.

I don’t understand why so many moderates on the left don’t understand this. “The country will never go for universal healthcare”, “the country will never support free higher education.” Maybe. But the country sure as fuck won’t get there if no one is asking for it. It’s called compromise and negotiations. You don’t start with giving the other side everything they want. You come to the table with what you want and go from there. Warren and Bernie knew a lot of the positions and ideas they promoted would be an uphill battle and borderline impossible to pass the legislation but they knew their ideas have a better chance if they at least tried.

This always bothers me, especially at the individual level. You want a policy/candidate but you don’t think they’re achievable/electable? Vote for them! I had so many friends who line up with progressive ideals but refused to vote for Liz or support M4A or free higher education because they didn’t think she was electable or that those things were achievable. Like, if you would just vote to elect someone, they become electable! If you do your part in trying to achieve something, then it becomes achievable!

Elizabeth Warren running caused me to realize something about a lot of American Progressives. Their ideals seem secondary to getting their way, and that has permanently affected how I view the Left.

The way so many of the people who were supposedly on our team turned on Warren, willing to risk another 4 years of Trump over risking a chance that their candidate would lose to Liz. Just wow. I lost a lot of respect for a lot of people.

To see a progressive again painted as far-right to push a candidate has really proven to me that many of the people pushing progressive views are really just populists. The US wasn't ready for actual progressive policy, even though it would have done us so much good.

And that's sad. And if the fistfight had just been between Bernie and Biden, I'd have been able to move forward just assuming they were the best we could deserve. Having seen the chance of a Warren presidency, then seeing it taken away not by the Center, but by the people we consider "progressives", who went on to whine about how unfair the DNC is to them for some reasons that don't even make sense if you read them... Oh hell I wish that eye had never been opened sometimes.

That eye had to open sooner or later, so better sooner than later. This is always the way on the far left. I’m older and strongly left leaning, so in my anti-Reagan youth I hung out with the lefty crowd of Nicaragua protesters and peta activists and environmental activists and whatnot, and a good percentage of my fellow travelers were passionate but unreasonable loons more interested in their moral high ground than effecting meaningful change.

Ignore them. There’s nothing to be done about them, so let it go. While there will always be toxic elements on the far left, and most of these gravitated to team Bernie this time round, please keep in mind that the vast majority of Bernie’s supporters are like us - good people working to push though as much change as possible.

Agreed. So much. Warren represented the best of the best, and I was actually a little afraid of how much I wanted her to win.

And so incredibly disappointed in some of my Sanders supporting friends who aggressively jumped on the Snake train... what the hell, guys? Why? And of course, some of them actually believed the poison they spewed about her. When that started to happen, it opened my eyes to how ugly the left could be, and how imperative it is that certain mindsets (right and left) not be allowed to be put in charge.

While I wish it could change, the way I view the typical Sanders Supporter right now is someone who wants a lot of the crap Trump stood for as related to party overtaking. There's this hate for the party that actually pushed for universal healthcare in the 90's because they're... unsalvageable? But there's this unwillingness to compromise on anything with anyone, even with the Left.

Frankly, I found Sanders' plans weaker than Warren's in that there were loopholes (similar to Yang's UBI plan) where relatively poor people could actually be hurt by them, especially in states with higher cost of living (and honestly, I live in one of those states). But regardless of how I felt, the idea of compromising with the Left or the Center on those plans was like "surrendering". I just don't see how that mindset is productive or positive. With the exception of getting rid of Trump, I don't see the kind of fight that happened this election having any ending that's good for the Left.

Warren’s candidacy didn’t fail because of Bernie fanatics attacking her online. It failed because she unfortunately couldnt figure out how to expand her coalition to minorities and the working class enough to get the nomination.

I genuinely don't believe that. When the betting odds had her at #1 early in October, there was a sudden influx of bullshit videos by Bernie "EXTREME FOLLOWER" lying about her, so much that I couldn't go a day without one or 10 being shoved in my face.

The thing is, there was a quick jump in "nah, nevermind-ers", people who seemed to start taking Warren seriously and might vote for her, and they suddenly decided she was "a liberal elite who is secretly a capitalist".

And you nailed it. The working class. The one group that Sanders' influence has continued to grow (IMO above and beyond the strength of his actual policies and promises).

That's just my 2c on it.

(Had to repost because I had a phrase that trigger automatic deletion)

While I am very disappointed that the candidate wound up being Biden, who was not my second or third or tenth choice, and while I strongly supported Warren for most of last year, I don't think the reasons for her loss are that simple. I'm one of those Warren supporters who switched to Sanders. I switched not because I felt Warren had betrayed me or progressives, and not because I believed she was a snake or anything like that. In fact, I still believe Warren is one of the premier progressives of our time and one of the most impressive and effective leaders the left has.

Here are some of the reasons Warren lost, and then I'll explain my own defection.

Reason 1: Warren hit very stormy weather in the October debate over the issue of Medicare for all. One can argue, probably correctly, that she was held to a higher standard than a male candidate would have been. One can even argue that specifically: Sanders also supported M4A and never bothered to spell out how to pay for it other than a payroll tax increase (though that strikes me as a reasonable way to do it), and never seemed to pay any particular political price at all for that, which is grossly unfair but there it is. On the other hand, Warren ill-advisedly got spooked by the tax word, and bent herself into a pretzel in order to avoid using them to pay for M4A. Her avoidance of a straight answer in the October debate, compounded by an M4A funding policy rollout a week or so later that was so complex and involved that it had the ultimate effect of costing her even more credibility on the issue, started her initial decline in the polls. There were a few paths and options she could have pursued that would have avoided that mishap. To begin with, it was probably a mistake to sign onto Sanders' plan; as the candidate with a "plan for that," she should have come up with her own health plan, with a funding mechanism that would have forestalled any question on the matter. Failing that, she should have simply agreed with Bernie at that October debate on the payroll tax and made the perfectly obvious and reasonable point that any payroll tax increase would still have left the average family paying thousands of dollars less per year than they do now in premiums, deductibles and co-pays. Or, assuming that she stuck to her guns and refused to answer the question directly in the October debate, she could have subsequently come up with a simpler, more straightforward way to pay for it than the very elaborate method which she ultimately produced. There were off-ramps there which she chose not to use. And that's unfortunate.

Reason 2: She was not as well known as Sanders, which means that she had more difficulty bouncing back from a minor cut like the October debate/M4A flap than she would have had if she had been better known. For example, if she had made a successful splash as a candidate in the 15-16 race, or if she had been a relatively successful and impressive veep candidate in 2016 instead of Kaine, she would have had a firmer and deeper reservoir of support than she had this time around.

Reason 3: Sexism, as I mentioned above. Had she been a male candidate, the flap over M4A would have been significantly less damaging, and much easier to recover from.

(There was also a hurdle which popped up which didn't affect Warren specifically since she had already been replaced by Bernie, at that point, but which would probably have affected her if she had been in a stronger position at the time. That hurdle was the one presented by African Americans who basically, in South Carolina and Super Tuesday, put their foot down and said "No. There will be no liberal candidate, there will no woman candidate, there will be no candidate of color, there will be no risk-taking of any kind. We will pick a safe, moderate candidate who won't rock the boat, because the situation is just too dangerous. We hereby veto the making of any history; the candidate will be white and male, end of discussion."

(I happen to think they were dead wrong, and that this was exactly the same sort of thinking that led to the Hillary nomination and her ultimate defeat. In the 21st century, Democratic presidential candidates need to excite, inspire and enthuse the Democratic base. That is a prerequisite before one even begins to think about the middle, independents, swing voters, etc. etc. That's the price of admission, and too many Democrats still don't seem to realize that. Unfortunately, that's democracy for you, and no one ever said voters don't have the right to be one hundred percent wrong in their understanding of the situation. (Fortunately, it's not too late to make up for this mistake, and naming Warren as the veep is one very good way of fixing that.))

Now, why did I switch? Simple. Both Warren and Sanders were beating Trump in the polls, and they were my two candidates. When Warren took her M4A tumble, I kept hoping she would recover, but it became obvious by Christmas that it wasn't happening. By then Warren had lost her lead over Trump both nationally and in the swing states. At that point, the only progressive game left in town was Sanders, who was doing fully as well as Biden both nationally in the popular vote and in the swing states (another truth which many people didn't realize about the relative strength of Biden and Sanders). So, at that point, I switched, very reluctantly.

To summarize, I don't believe Warren's failure can be laid primarily at the feet of any unreasonable purity test imposed by progressives. I do not believe that was a major factor in her swing and a miss. There were lots of other things, subtle things, multiple factors, that led to her ultimate defeat for the nomination, some which she could have handled more effectively, most over which she had no control. Were there a few Bernie "supporters" who kept sliming and trashing her? Sure. But that does not represent the vast majority of Sanders supporters like me. And I don't believe their penetration into the public awareness was at all significant outside the hothouse of the social media bubble and Twitterverse. I will remind you that Morning Consult polling consistently showed Warren as the second choice of Sanders supporters and vice versa, and their polling continues to show that right up to the present day. For the most part, their supporters like both leaders and are perfectly comfortable with both, regardless of the very loud noises some trouble-makers like to make in the bleachers.

I don't entirely agree with you, but I do agree that you shouldn't be getting downvoted. It's a very reasonable opinion.

My problem is that Warren's clean campaign drew me more than most things. That she was positive about Bernie and even respectful of Biden while still being competitive... well it reminded me of the good old days just a teeny bit, even though I didn't see Bernie or Biden entirely reciprocate.

I guess a piece of me still sees that as an extension of anti-corruption, and I wanted that. By the end, I literally wanted anyone blue but Bernie. And I go back and forth about how much of that is about Bernie "EXTREME FOLLOWER" or about Bernie himself. But I think we're all on the same team and Bernie made clear he's that guy who wants everyone to quit and join his new team.

It's dark times like these that we look for leaders, those that inspire, those that give us hope, those who will not give up their fight & work when many of us want to give up. Warren is one of those individuals.

I put over 100 hours into her campaign and countless more into modding this sub. I have absolutely no regrets. None. Zero. You have to fight for what's important to you. You won't always win, but if you don't fight, you'll never win.

So denying any man and now denying any female because she outshines. Ok.
Can we get a consensus on what Warren is “allowed” to do with her qualifications and life’s work without hurting someone’s feelings? Yeeeesh. That question was too much, yet she absolutely killed the answer.